What Mystery Local SEO Factors Are At Play Here?

[SEO1805]

Absolutely perplexed on the ranking factors for Google Maps (hence also the 3-pack in normal search results).

Are seeing search queries that return 3-pack and organic result like this and wondering why these sites are getting 3-pack preference?Not that sites 2 and 3 are no closer to the test user's location than Site 4.  All 4 sites have a street address showing.3-pack result:#1 - Site 1 - No reviews. Same distance as Site 4 to user. #2 - Site 2 - 1 review for 1 star. Farther from user than site 4. #3 - Site 3 - 2 reviews for 5-star average.  Farther from user than site 1, 2, and 4.#4 (not show in 3-pack) - Site 4 - 6 reviews with 6 star rating, closer to user than site 2 and 3.Organic results below 3-pack:#1 - Site 4#2 - Site 4#3 - Other site#4 - Site 1Sites 2 and 3 not in top 10 organic non-map resultsSo what would be the most likely ranking factors keeping making site 1-3 rank above site 4 in the 3-pack/map results?If on-page and backlink factors were at play, you'd expect to see sites 1, 2 and 3 higher than site 4, and in the case of site 2 and 3 at least in the top 10 of the organic results.  All sites were similar distance to the user.

[SEO1805]

Well there's another 'mystery listing' in the same search now.  Same case, business is not in close proximity, no reviews, poor orgranic rank.  It is starting to look like indeed Google rotates in a random listing - sort of like it gives newer advertisers/ads some exposure in the Adwords auction to build some  analytics data to see how effective the ad is (to see if they can make some money off it.)

This sort of makes sense from the 3-pack standpoint because businesses listed there will obviously get higher CTR and then would be self-perpetuating so to speak so that if the 3-pack was solely based on reviews, organic rank, CTR, and other aspects, the businesses in the 3-pack would almost never change.  So they need to add some sort of random rotational function to give other businesses a "chance" to demonstrate their relevance.  So one of the 3-pack spots may be rotating newer listings despite have little or poor local ranking factors such as organic rank and reviews.  Just my educated guess based on lots of observations.

[SEO1805]

In addition the schema on the contact page uses the address:

2310 Central Ave, Irwindale, CA 91010 USA

Also not Los Angeles

[SEO1805]

I found the Wild Rabbit company at one point (may still be) had an address in Duarte,  about 20 miles E/NE of Los Angeles.

Domain is registered in San Gabriel.

Business license has Woodland Hills and San Gabriel addresses.

If it's a proximity to center point thing I would guess they verified address is NOT one of these addresses.

[MiriamEllis]

Another thing I noticed about the original search is that there is heavy filtering going on at the automatic zoom level of the map. Once you zoom in, tons of other companies appear. So, this could point to Google lacking confidence in these results.

I found this pack interesting enough to share with Mike Blumenthal, who smartly pointed out the Google has no category for "drone company". Just a theory, but this could possibly be leading Google to have to rely on the signal of what is in the business title, and the company ranking #1 has added the keyword "drone" to their title (though it doesn't appear to be part of their legal business name, and is, of course, then not allowed). So, this could have something do do with the mysteriousness of this pack.

To see the centroid of a city, look it up in Google and click on the map. The spot where Google has placed the city name is the centroid. In this case, the centroid of LA is in the extreme east of the city borders. The company we're looking at lists no address on its GMB listing or website. The website just shows a map of LA. The GMB listing describes the business as being in Glendale, which is a bit to the north of the centroid. You could compare this to the revealed locations of the other two companies and see what you think. It's a good question you've raised.

At any rate, there seems to be a lack of Google confidence in these results.

[SEO1805]

Yes, that's an interesting observation.

Try searching: drone companies in los angeles ca

White Rabbit is still #2 but at least you see a more representative set of listings in the maps results.

Maybe the stark difference in map results between two very similar searches gives us a clue as to what's going on, but I've yet to figure it out.

One thought is for any city search Google has to use some specific location as the "center point" to determine proximity (for us users not physically in Los Angeles).  Maybe the actual verified address of White Rabbit is nearest the point Google is using for the center of Los Angeles?

Wonder if there is a way to determine what Google is using as the center point?

[MiriamEllis]

Hey, that is a good mystery pack! Something seems odd about it. Do you notice that even when you click through on the map, there are only 3 companies, total, showing in the local finder view? Are there really only 3 drone companies in LA? I find that very hard to believe. For some reason I can't identify, Google is acting like it only knows of 3 such companies that match the query. I was expecting to see dozens of them upon clicking through to the local finder view. So, something is odd there.

[SEO1805]

Okay, for those that want an example, I found a good one.

Search: Los Angeles Drone Companies

Why the heck is Wild Rabbit listed #1 in 3-pack?

They are listed position 13 in organic SERPS. They have no reviews. They aren't showing their physical address (so no pin on map).  They are in the HUGE market of Los Angeles. The don't have the words 'drone' or 'company' in their page title or content (only in their meta description). They aren't in any of the major directories (other than Yelp) like yellowpages.com or superpages.com

Baffling

[MiriamEllis]

Hi SEO1805,

Without seeing the actual result, this is shooting in the dark, but I'd look at filters (Possum), factors like domain authority, and the possibility of spam either positively or negatively impacting the results.

If you can share the SERP you're looking at, that might help us dig down a bit deeper on this.

I also recommend doing a complete competitive analysis between the site ranking #1 and the one you are marketing. (See: https://moz.com/blog/basic-local-competitive-audit)

[SEO1805]

Yes, we all realize there are most likely hundreds of ranking factors although I would guess the 80/20 rule applies that 20% of the ranking factors make up 80% of the "weight" in the ranking algo.

One thing we no for sure is that Google's objective is to provide the most relevant search results given the user's intention.  So for those of us that are intimately familiar with a specific business or subject area niche and all the players, we can compare the results to our human evaluation of what the real world situation is.  You may know company A is the leader in the category with the best service and value and a long-standing history, great customer kudos, etc.  So the results should steer you towards that company.

In my 17 years experience, i find it remarkable how on the mark the organic results are on Google.  It really puts Bing and other search engines to shame.  However I guess the point of this thread, speaking in general terms now, is that I'm not seeing that same AI ability transferred over to the local citation rankings on the 3-pack and Maps Search Results.

It's really in my mind not rocket science. Their organic algo IS rocket science in my opinion but tweeking it for local results is in my opinion a far simpler task by comparison.  (a) Take advantage of your existing algo and make that a large part of your local ranking, (b) make proximity to user's location intent much stronger, (c) make backlinks on authoritative local directories or organizations stronger (BBB, Dunns, Chamber of Commerce, etc.) (d) add a bit more importance to user reviews.

What other factors could be as important or more important than those from a local search standpoint?  This should be a fairly straight forward exercise in simple logic.

To me it looks like Google has not invested the same brain power in tweaking it's local rankings that it has in it's normal organic ranking algo and so going forward I would expect more significant changes to the local search algo by comparison.

[SEO1805]

First sorry for the typos.  I did come up with one difference I know of... citation age.  Site #4 is a newer business.  But it is in all the aggregators and has proper local schema markup.

No significant pattern regarding page length.  That seems to me would be another factor used in the regular organic results so wouldn't make sense Site #4 would rank so much better if it was being demoted on 3-pack due to page length.  Site #4 does beat out 2 of the 3 sites in the 3-pack for many other similar searches though.  So citation and/or domain age can't be that big of a factor.

I was always under the impressions that closeness to user's location was #1, most normal organic ranking factors was second most important, and reviews were last.

I guess another explanation could be the do some random round robin to agree similar to the Adwords auction in order to test CTR of newer ads.